


Sweat, Tears, or the Sea

by darkrosaleen



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Baking, Crack Treated Seriously, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M, Other, POV First Person, POV Inanimate Object, POV Outsider, Pining, Slight Food Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/pseuds/darkrosaleen
Summary: Statement of salt, harvested from a mine in Scotland and bought at an organic grocer in Chiswick by Martin Blackwood in summer 2016.Statement never written or recorded.





	Sweat, Tears, or the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/gifts).



> I've never watched GBBO, but I know how to bake, so hopefully this suffices.

We think we remember the sea. Most of our life has been deep down in the earth, in cold, dark caverns untouched by sun or living things. But long ago, millions of years ago, we were part of the sea. Long ago, we moved with the flow of water, and we felt sunlight and the brush of green things, wriggly things, living things. Then there was the shift, and then the rock, and so it has been for a long, long time.

After millions of years of rock, there comes drilling. There comes hard metal and steam and sparks, and we crumble down from the rock that has been our home for so long, carried away by strange creatures who move and pulse and breathe and wear the fur of plants as their own. There is salt inside them too, inside the red and yellow and clear water they leak onto the surface of the rock. We drink it greedily, because we remember the sea water it came from.

After the drilling, we are put on a large metal creature that moves but is not living. We come to a big cavern made of smooth crushed rocks, where one of the living creatures places us in a large sack that is clear like water but does not breathe. We learn the word _plastic_. We do not like plastic.

It goes like this for a while. In and out of plastic containers, back and forth on large metal creatures, until we find ourselves in a small cavern made of dead trees and more crushed rocks. This creature puts us inside a container made from dead trees instead of plastic, so we like this creature. It calls itself Ramesh. It calls this cavern Chizzik, which we think is part of the cavern called London. London is a strange cavern, big and old with many, many tunnels and rivers running under the earth. 

We learn many things in Chizzik. We learn that the creatures with drills and plant fur call themselves _people_. It is there that we meet the people called Martin. 

Martin is a big people. It has a soft voice and soft pink skin that folds and wrinkles around its bones. It talks to us like we are people, which not even Ramesh did. We like Martin.

Ramesh puts us in a glass container that smells like sweet berries. Martin holds the container as we journey underground on a large metal creature. It pats our lid and murmurs softly whenever the metal creature bucks. It does not do this to the other objects it carries. We are special.

The cavern Martin lives in is very small, and has only one sub-cavern, the one with a small river that all people caverns have. We are removed from the berry container and placed in a container of smooth clay. Martin leaves us sitting on the counter as it gathers food, making sweet sounds with its breath and talking to the other objects in the cavern.

After that night, we are inside Martin. It's soft and warm on the inside, just like the outside. Martin makes happy noises when it puts us in its mouth. Martin makes food with many different parts, and we learn what it's like to be with sugar, citrus, vinegar, milk, and many other things. Martin takes great pleasure in making food, and in eating it. We understand; new experiences are exciting.

Martin does not have a mate, but it mates by itself, in its sleeping place. We learn the sounds it makes, and the smell of mating, which is different than the smell of Ramesh mating with the people called Sarah against the counter after turning the lights off. Mating has many different smells. Some people mate to make their belly swell with young, and some mate to trigger good-feeling smells, and some mate to banish bad-feeling smells. 

Martin is mostly the good-feeling kind. For Martin, good-feelings from mating smell like good-feelings from food, and from a warm safe burrow, and from getting wet in the river cavern. The people called Tim says that Martin is _a hedonistic Roman emperor, or maybe an old doddery cat curled up by the fire._

Maybe that's why Martin makes so many naughty cakes. Naughty cakes have many sugars and butters and not much of us, _just a wee pinch_ as Martin says. When we are in a naughty cake, there is no flood of mouth water like we are used to, except for the terrible time that Martin put a whole cup of us in the batter and we were put in the bin and sent to the horrible rotting place. We are not sure why it puts us in naughty cake if it doesn't like the taste, but we have learned that Martin puts us in nearly everything it cooks. Perhaps it is a ritual; Martin talks of _salt circles_ and sometimes tosses us over its shoulder onto the floor, even though it never eats or even licks the floor. Maybe we are magic. Maybe we make naughty cakes magic.

Martin is making a special naughty cake. We do not know why this cake is special, but Martin smells like fear and there is clear-saltwater soaking into its shirt. It talks to us even more than usual. We feel a strange, new dissatisfaction, because we like Martin, but we cannot fix its fear smell. We will have to fix it from the inside, when Martin eats the naughty cake.

"I don't even know if he likes sweets," Martin says. "I've never seen him eat anything except pot noodles and coffee. He certainly doesn't have the temperament for sweets, but who doesn't like a good homemade cake? Of course, it's a mistake to think that absolutely everybody likes a thing, unless it's breathing or something." Martin laughs. "He'd be the kind of bloody tosser to say that, wouldn't he? 'I know it's necessary for survival, but I just find breathing so gauche. I take my oxygen intravenously.'"

Martin's hand tightens on the spoon. "God, he probably hates cake. He's probably gluten intolerant or something. He's going to throw the bloody thing in my face and fire me on the spot. 'How dare you insinuate that I have any affection for sweet things, you insipid, pathetic excuse for a man. Take your stupid cake and choke on it.'"

Martin suddenly smells like bad feelings. It leaves the batter on the counter and sits at the table, placing its forehead on the table and making a distressed sound. "Martin Blackwood, you absolute lunatic, your taste in men is impressively bad. Nan's rolling in her grave. 'Never date a girl who won't eat your cooking, Martin.' Girl and date notwithstanding, of course."

Martin picks up our small glass shaker, inspecting us thoroughly. There is saltwater leaking from its eyes, and we wish we could join it in offering comfort. "Martin Blackwood, you _are_ an absolute lunatic. You work at a bloody paranormal investigation office and have been personally targeted by a hideous worm monster. You can give a bloody cake to your bloody crush."

We have slowly learned that _bloody_ is not always the red-people-water, but we do not know this meaning of _crush_. We know crushing garlic, and crushing fingers in a drawer, but those are not people. This people does not sound nice, with its crushing and its distaste for food and our Martin. 

After a moment of thought, Martin returns to stirring the batter. The good-feeling smell returns, tinged by the hot-salty smell of mating. "Jonathan Sims, you're going to eat my cake and you're going to bloody well like it." Martin laughs, blood rushing up near its skin. "Oof, that sounded wrong. Not that I'd mind it, of course. Bet all that annunciating does wonders for the tongue. Come over here and eat my cake, you dirty archivist." Martin shakes its head. "Blackwood, you mad thing, get yourself together." 

We do not understand why Jonathan Sims eating Martin's cake is distressing, because Martin enjoys giving food to people it likes. But despite not having mating instincts ourselves, we understand why Martin feels that hot-salty feeling at being eaten by its mate. Being eaten is the most intimate, euphoric way to connect with a creature you love.

Oh. Do we love Martin? We did not understand love before Martin. Perhaps that is the same thing.

The special cake for the crush-people Jonathan Sims is rich and heavy, made with butter and cream and topped with a delicate fruity glaze. It feels heavy around us, thick and moist. It is the kind of cake that Martin eats slowly, savoring each small bite with satisfied noises and rubbing its full, heavy belly. It is the kind of cake that people call sinful, which must be a better kind of cake than naughty cake. 

Martin places the cake in a plastic container, and we aren't too angry because Martin is in distress and we want this mating ritual to go well. We leave the cavern and travel on a big metal creature until we reach a big, old cavern made of stone. It isn't as old as the caverns we came from, but as Martin brings us deeper and deeper into the earth, we can feel the weight of the years bearing down on us. There is something in this cavern that thinks and speaks as we do, and we can hear it screaming, although Martin does not appear to notice.

We come to a small cavern where a people sits at a desk. It is a small people, hard and pointy where Martin is soft and smooth. It smells of fear and anger and tired and hungry, and when it sees Martin and the plastic container, it suddenly blooms with the smell of good-feelings and mouth-water.

"What on earth is that?" the people says. It speaks as though it is unhappy, but it is clearly not. It shines and glows with warm, happy feelings.

"It's a cake," Martin says, setting it on the desk. "Wanted to try a new recipe, but I've been eating too much cake recently so I thought I'd give it to—bring it into the office to share."

The people we now suspect to be Jonathan Sims lifts the plastic and gives the cake a hard, scrutinizing look. "That's very, er. Very kind of you." Jonathan Sims sniffs the cake. "That smells amazing. You're a real talent, Martin, thank you."

Martin is glowing with good feelings, but also wet with nervous saltwater. "Aren't you going to try it? Not that you have to, I mean maybe you're not hungry. You don't have to eat it just because I made it."

"No, it's fine. I could eat. Probably need some tea to wash it down, though."

"Oh, of course. Right on it." Martin scurries out of the cavern. We like seeing Martin pleased.

Jonathan Sims leans back in its desk chair and looks at the cake for a very long time without speaking. "What does it mean? Too much cake, my arse. Martin's never met a cake he won't eat. He's got the sweet tooth of a toddler." Jonathan Sims smiles fondly. "Am I being thanked? Forgiven? Buttered up? No pun intended." Jonathan Sims moves the platter around to look at the cake from all angles. Its gaze is deep and penetrating and sees more than mere berries. "I suppose it's bad form to look a gift cake in the mouth. Martin really is a good cook. I hear he's been up in Chiswick buying artisanal salt, of all things."

Martin returns with two mugs of leaf water and two empty plates. It hands a knife to Jonathan Sims, who cuts two generous slices out of us (very generous, for a people who isn't supposed to like sweets) and hands one to Martin. They each break off a forkful, and Martin holds its fork up in the air. "Cheers."

Jonathan Sims bumps its forkful against Martin's forkful, and some of the cake crumbs mingle in the collision. At the same time, forks enter mouths and we are inside Martin and Jonathan Sims. They both eat slowly and make satisfied noises, although we cannot tell whether they are satisfied with the naughty cake or with each other.

**Author's Note:**

> CW: first person plural, implied vore, implied feederism, use of "it" pronouns for humans by a sentient object, phonetic spelling of Chiswick


End file.
